Bowhunting is widely enjoyed, especially for hunting game animals such as white-tail deer. When hunting, the proficient bowhunter will try to direct the flight of the arrow to strike the deer (or other game animal) in a vital area, so that the arrow creates a mortal wound, and the deer dies quickly. However, the deer often escapes, even after a fatal wound, and can run for a considerable distance to seek cover somewhere in the underbrush. In that case, the hunter attempts to follow the blood trail left behind as the wounded animal moves, so the hunter can find the deer and harvest it properly.
In bowhunting, the results of a shot of an arrow at an animal can be classified in four basic types. (1) In a clean miss, where the arrow misses the animal, the deer bounds away unwounded, and the hunt for that particular animal is at an end. (2) For a clean kill shot, i.e., where the arrow is well placed in a vital organ, the wound results in an adequate blood trail which leads the hunter easily to the animal, which expires quickly from the wound. (3) A typical kill shot is a less than perfectly placed shot, but the wound results in a blood trail that will eventually dry up before leading to the animal, which will eventually expire from the wound. Every year there are thousands of deer that are killed this way, and where the hunter has to abandon the search after having spent hours trying in vain to find the animal, because the blood trail has ended before the deer can be located. (4) A non-vital shot is one that misses any vital organs, but nonetheless wounds the animal, i.e., in the rump or shoulder, for example, and where the wound, while not fatal in itself, can become infected and/or fail to heal properly. This can cause undue stress or eventually death to the animal, but will not result in harvesting of the animal by any hunter. All or nearly all bowhunters have experienced, or eventually will experience, a shot on a game animal that they know is not fatal, leaving the hunter hoping that the wounded animal survives and recovers, although often the wounded animal does succumb to the infection.
Some previous attempts to increase the blood flow from the wound on a game animal have involved modifying the arrows to increase the wound size or hold the wound open. However, these techniques involve having to use special, modified arrows or arrowheads, and cannot guarantee any success if the arrow penetrates too far or not far enough. A previous attempt to provide a blood-clot-inhibiting formulation that was to be applied to the blades of the arrow head when hunting is described in Jones U.S. Pat. No. 7,255,659. The Jones formulation was an aqueous mixture of gums and glycerine, in which the active ingredient was trisodium citrate, with small inclusions of tumeric, white willow bark, ginger and fenugreek. While the formulation was intended to inhibit blood clotting, it is unknown just how much longer blood would continue to flow from any wound where the Jones formulation was present. Also, the Jones formulation was not intended to promote healing or prevent infection in the event of a non-mortal hit of an animal, nor is there any indication that the ingredients in that formulation would have sufficient effectiveness in healing a wounded animal that escapes with such a wound.